Once Upon a Storybook
by nitefang
Summary: "Once upon a bloody time, a bookworm and a prankster were unwittingly caught in a bleedin' explosion that trapped them in an effing Muggle storybook. It all began because of all bloody Seamus Finnegan. We should just exile Seamus, and then we'll all live happily ever after."
1. Prologue

**Prologue  
**_once upon a time_

* * *

Though she never would have thought it possible, Hermione Granger found herself growing quite close to Fred and George Weasley after the war.

Ron had gone into Auror training, encouraged by Harry and Hermione when he doubted his skills as a duelist and strategist. Harry had foregone another lifetime of chasing Dark Wizards and had instead taken up an apprenticeship at Hogwarts, eventually to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Hermione had gone into the Department of Magical Education at the Ministry, working closely with the Department of Muggle Relations. Her job involved setting up and maintaining a program to integrate Muggleborn children into the Wizarding community before their entrance to Hogwarts.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were the Golden Trio 'til the very end, but for the time being, their paths intertwined on some weekends and the occasional lunch date or to visit Hogwarts. But in the boys' absence, she wound up spending more and more time with Fred and George.

Hermione could blame it on needing to replace the seriousness of the previous years with the foolishness of the twins, but if she was being truthful with herself, she had to admit that she enjoyed being surrounded by the sheer beauty of magic that accompanied the twins' shenanigans. She was wrong back when she'd said their magic was useless. Anything that could bring a smile to anyone's face could never be useless. So she often found herself in the joke shop, sitting in the workroom and watching the twins work on new inventions, marveling at their creativity.

There was also the fact that she lived in Diagon Alley, less than a two minute walk from the shop. Surprisingly, there were a lot of benefits to living in close proximity to the twins. For one thing, Hermione always had company for lunch, as Fred and George would never pass up a meal, let alone one in her company. They ensured nothing in her refrigerator would ever go bad and were actually very good with replacing whatever they may have cleared through. Overall, whenever food was in the equation, they could be depended upon.

It also ensured that Hermione would never go to bed in a foul mood. She could always rely on the twins to cheer her up or at the very least dissipate her sadness or anger. Fred and George could still be annoying as hell, expertly pushing all her buttons in just the right combination. That was the key. They knew the buttons. So more often than not, they punched in the right code for a smile to follow the eye-roll that broke her gloomy expressions.

That was part of the reason why she came early to the joke shop on the 2nd of May, 2004. It was the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, when they'd lost Tonks, Remus, Lavender, Colin, and nearly lost Fred himself. But it was also Victoire Weasley's birthday.

And so dressed in a white-and-lilac sundress and sandals, with Victoire's birthday present tucked under her arm, Hermione moseyed over to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She knew the melancholy hanging in the hair would be banished as soon as she crossed the threshold of the joke shop; it had no place at a birthday party for a two-year-old, after all.

She pushed open the front door to the brightly colored shop, and just as she'd predicted, the melancholy lifted. Before she could even try to search out one of the twins, the bell chimed overhead and all around her as well. Little orbs of white light gently swirled around her, leaving trails of multicolored streaks and sparkles in their wakes as they twirled around. They caressed her skin with soft, warm tingles that made her laugh and squirm to the gentle rhythms of the charm. Fred and George's heads peered out from behind the aisle of Skiving Snackboxes, grinning widely.

"There it is!" cried George, clapping his hands and pointing at Hermione's face as they strolled out to meet her.

"There's our seal of approval," said Fred, reaching out to poke the corner of Hermione's smile with a wry wink.

"See, we were a bit wary of this charm, Granger," said George, slinging an arm around her shoulder, "since we thought it might trigger some sort of PMS."

Hermione jerked and pinched her lips, stunned out of the awe of their gentle magic. "PMS?" she echoed slowly.

"Yeah. Poison Memory Syndrome," said Fred. "That Muggle disorder people get after they go through traumatic situations and get really bad flashbacks?"

Hermione bit back her smile. _Poison Memory Syndrome_. She supposed it made sense. "It's PTSD, boys—Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."

George frowned and errantly drummed his fingers on her shoulder as he continued to hold onto her. "Then what's PMS?"

"Could've sworn we heard you say PMS at some point," added Fred, head cocked to the side.

"Pre-Menstrual Syndrome," answered Hermione. When the two grown men audibly swallowed, she rolled her eyes and saved them. "What was this charm for?"

"Just a little thing we did on a whim," said Fred. "Got the idea when Mum was decorating the Burrow for Victoire's party. Reckoned the baby girl would like the sparkles and lights when she walked into the kitchen to see her cake and blow out the candles."

"But we wanted to test it on you first," said George. "Just to see if it might be too intense for the other veterans, if you know what I mean."

Hermione nodded, still smiling softly at the bouncing, flittering lights. She could understand their hesitation about the harmless charm. One of the orbs danced close to her hand, and she quickly plucked it from the air. It hummed gently in her palm, and she could feel it seemingly multiply before shooting out from between her fingers.

"It's beautiful," she murmured admiringly. "I don't think you have a thing to worry about."

"Thank Merlin," breathed Fred. "The Whiz-bangs were our inspiration, see? But we wanted to make it baby-friendly—less gunpowder, less scary explosions, no dragons…" He ticked off his fingers.

"Kept the light show, eliminated dangerous mental repercussions," said George. "And instead of shooting spells to make them multiply, you just—poke one." He prodded one of the orbs with his fingertip, and it multiplied again, tumbling around Hermione in a swirl of pinks, purples, and periwinkles.

"Are you going to sell it?" asked Hermione.

"Nah, don't need to capitalize on everything," said George.

Fred came to her other side and snaked his arm around her waist as the twins walked her deeper into the ostentatiously-colored shop. The charm faded the further they got from the doorway, and while Hermione was sad to see the lights fad, the lightheartedness continued. "If that were the case, we would've long-since sold old—"

"—and new—"

"—embarrassing pictures of Ronniekins to _Witch Weekly_," finished Fred, fanning his hand as they crossed through a cloud of pastel-colored bubbles emitting from one of their products.

"Honestly, if given adequate excuse, we'd probably still do it now," said George.

Hermione shook her head and sighed. "You mean the one with the spatula?"

Fred and George's happy smiles widened evilly, and they chorused, "The one with the ice."

_Oh, poor Ronald_, she thought, laughing. "You two are going to be banned from his inevitable wedding, I'm sure of it."

"Which is just as likely as Ron _himself_ being banned," said Fred.

"He certainly does have the impeccable timing of putting his foot in his mouth," said George, waving his wand to lock the front door and flip the sign to "closed."

"He _did_ actually have a proclivity for gumming his toes when he was a baby," added Fred, tapping his lip thoughtfully. And then his expression brightened. George's face lit up almost a split second later, a clear sign of the strike of inspiration.

Hermione grinned as she watched their wide eyes and snapping fingers. They released her from their joint hold to put their heads together, a quick brainstorming session right in front of her.

"A variation of the Tongue-Ton Toffee—"

"—under the full lunar phase to ensure maximum mental effect—"

"—inevitable crumble of Wizarding society—"

Hermione's eyes widened and her grin was wiped clear. "What?!"

Fred and George turned to her with identical, wicked grins, and Hermione tried not to grimace. She'd learned to gauge the severity of their inventions from the way they smiled. Sheepish grins meant something that would be somehow detrimental to academics. Wide, happy grins meant an abundance of laughter at the minimum detriment of the victim. However, wicked grins meant products that were particularly diabolical.

"Foot Gummies," said George.

"All the effects of putting one's foot in the mouth, but without the dirt and the stench," said Fred.

"And that has _what_ to do with the 'inevitable crumble of Wizarding society?'" asked Hermione through her teeth.

"The dissipation of relationships," said Fred.

"Offense taken at every corner," said George.

Fred sighed and stared off into the distance. "It'd be like Ron accidentally cloned himself and populated the community."

"Veto!" shrieked Hermione as the twins howled with laughter. "You gave me three veto's a year—this is number two! Veto!"

George leaned against the counter, his face red as he guffawed, while Fred led Hermione to the workroom, as she continued to yowl, "Inevitable crumble of Wizarding society indeed! I cannot under good conscience let you two—"

"We'll shelve the idea for now, eh?" offered Fred, still chortling as he towed her along.

"Fred, you will take that off the shelf and chuck it in the bin—do you understand the repercussions? The fallout—"

"Will be as majestic and destructive as your attempts to make soufflé."

Hermione spluttered indignantly and Fred took the opportunity to throw open the door to the workroom and nudge her inside, instigating a fresh burst of chimes and sparkles. Apparently they charmed all of their doorways.

Hermione, still fuming, walked down the short staircase to the long, rectangular workroom, brightly lit with lamps in close intervals on the ceiling, casting a cheerful glow on the dark wood. Five workbenches spanned the room, each with various experiments and inventions and contraption populating the surface. A supply shelf was built into the wall on the far end, filled with vials, tumblers, and jars of ingredients. The air was thick with the smell of potions and the fizzle of magic—much like a combination of the Potions and Charms classrooms.

She sat down on a stool by the workbench with bundles of colorful quills and three cauldrons. One emitted long, wispy tendrils of smoke, the second released a cool, rolling mist, and the third seemed fairly empty. Fred stood next to her stool and cancelled the protective stasis charm on the workbench.

"What're these?" asked Hermione, setting Victoire's present down on a free space and picking up a quill from a bundle.

"Joke quills," replied Fred as she twirled it between her fingers. "They'll write on your face if you fall asleep in class." He picked up one of the other quills, a longer, sturdier feather with a wide nub. "And this will keep on writing if you fall asleep in the middle of your notes, so even if you look half-dead, your hand will keep on going."

"Does it actually take legible notes once you fall asleep?"

Fred snorted. "Nope. As soon as your hand slackens, it shoots off, writing lyrics to wizard lullabies."

"Well, I suppose both deter students from slacking off," she said, nodding in approval. She picked up another quill, an ordinary-looking one. "And this?"

Fred grinned. "One of my favorites, actually." He picked up an innocuous purple quill and rested the tip against her lips. "Now, make your introductions, Granger, don't be rude."

Frowning warily, Hermione whispered, "Hello. My name is Hermione."

Fred then pulled it away and then chucked it across the room.

"Now, call for it," he said, smiling at her smugly.

Frown deepening, Hermione obeyed. "Q-Quill? Please come here!"

The purple quill suddenly rose up imposingly from where it'd fallen on the other side of the workroom. It quivered for a second before zipping over to Hermione. She managed to catch it before it embedded itself over her heart.

"Ingenious," squeaked Hermione sarcastically, setting it down carefully.

"Right?" agreed Fred proudly. "Call, and it'll come so you don't have to root through your bag and wind up pricking your finger or something. We figured that since the bloody thing is a _feather_, it should still be able to take to the skies, eh?"

"You know you run the very high risk of someone getting their eye poked out."

"Well, _of course. _All these quills may be respectable in your eyes, but they're still our products. Besides, it's better than it was before," said Fred. "At least you could stop it. First time we tested it out, it nearly went straight through my hand."

Hermione's jaw dropped, and she pushed herself away from the quills.

"Oh, don't worry!" He waggled his palm with a good-natured smile. "All healed. And we've significantly decreased the speed, sweetums, don't worry. The most it would've done was poked you a bit."

Still grimacing, Hermione eyed the quills. "Is that it?"

Fred hummed thoughtfully, sifting through the quills and then producing two sleek, slender quills, one black and the other white. "These have the potential to be extremely helpful, though we're still working out a few kinks. You can write secret messages with these. Each are specifically paired so it won't work with any other set. Write your message, and the words will fade into something else—innocuous messages or lyrics or an anecdote reminiscent of Ron's last encounter with vengeful garden gnomes. In order for the true message to be revealed, your partner and the partner quill need only draw a line through the decoy words."

"Fascinating," said Hermione, lighting up. "What are the kinks?"

"Well, some of the true words leak into the decoy, so the cover message is a bit incomprehensible and vice versa," said Fred, setting the quills back down and making his way around the workbench.

"What's in that other cauldron?" she asked, pointing at the almost empty cauldron down the other end of the table.

"Potion to stabilize the Patented Daydream Charms," answered Fred, packing the quills up into separate satchels. He winced. "Apparently in some packages, the daydream either starts turning into a nightmare or cuts off right when things start getting interesting. So we suffused the powder of the Daydream Charms with that potion. We've tested it ourselves about a hundred times, over and over—lost an entire bloody weekend on a pirate ship, sailing the high seas with a wench on one arm and a beautiful rival pirate on the other."

"And these?" asked Hermione, pointing at the two cauldrons casually.

Fred smirked, putting aside the quills and coming to stand in front of the cauldrons. "I'm proud of you, Herms—lasting long enough to ask about everything else on the table before your intended target?"

"Just tried to give you more time to come up with a viable explanation for what these are that won't require my other veto," she said shrewdly.

Fred clutched his chest dramatically. "I would never—"

Hermione scoffed.

"—make a product that is not even a bit morally questionable, Granger, you should know that already," he finished with a small bow and a devilish grin. "This, my dear unsubtle bookworm, are the keys to our little disappearing trick."

Hermione frowned at the two cauldrons. "Apparition doesn't need potio—"

"Hush your assumptions, lovely," he said, flourishing a fluffy quill at her face to interrupt her. "Do you remember when you brought us to your parents' house—"

"When you _invited yourselves_ to my parents' house?"

"Now's not the time for semantics, darling. Your dad showed us those Muggle tricks, right?"

Hermione smiled broadly.

Richard Granger had _floored_ the twins with his skills at magic tricks. The man had become a certifiable sleight-of-hand master after he'd promised Hermione he'd teach himself so they could exchange tips and pointers when she came back from her first year at Hogwarts. So when Richard pulled out the old deck of cards and asked the twins to _pick a card, any card_, Hermione had grinned widely and watched the show. The sight had perpetuated the guilt she continued to harbor for Obliviating and sending her parents away. But in his true unflappable way, Richard had smiled, pulled a coin from behind her ear, kissed her forehead, and continued to awe the twins by making a card float in midair.

She'd expected the wins to immediately incorporate the tricks to the joke shop, but the men shocked her once again by staunchly deciding to keep Muggle tricks Muggle. They hadn't wanted to mar their integrity and demean them with real wizardry.

Which made her suddenly leery of the two potions between herself and Fred.

"Did you…recreate something?" she asked, frowning at Fred's suddenly troubled expression.

His head tilted left and right as he hedged. "Well, Georgie and I got curious, you know? Muggles managed to make things disappear and reappear with Portkeys or Apparition—"

"Because of sleight of hand. I explained that already—"

"—but we wanted to see if we could do it. Try it out, you know?"

Hermione's grimace began to grow. "All right…"

"We could hardly incorporate Apparition since it's hard to make a non-sentient being determine and deliberate its destination. Short of giving an apple a brain with a three-concept loop, we may as well have chucked a banana from one end of the room to the other."

"So you had to create your own spell."

"Which was the rub, wasn't it?" Fred drummed his fingers on the table, eyes darting between the cauldrons and Hermione. "We'd have to register it at the Patents Office in the _Ministry_, which would mean _public access_ to a spell that could be used for highly _nefarious purposes_, Granger."

Hermione sighed and crossed her arms on the table. "Yes, yes, I remember your vow to ensure your products couldn't be used by Dark wizards or at the very least be modified for evil."

"The _wrong_ _kind _of evil. You were so close to having it verbatim, love," said Fred, winking.

"All right, so you made _potions _instead?" asked Hermione, steering the conversation back. "You'd still have to submit the patent to the Ministry."

"Not until we're out of the experimentation phase, sweetcheeks," sighed Fred, patting said cheek and making her slap his hand away. "We decided to bring it as close to the final stages as possible before we decided what to do with the final product."

Hermione sat up and peered into the cauldrons. "So are these the final stages?"

"No. This was just us trying to brainstorm a different avenue from spells or charms. Potions made the magic a little more stable and difficult to _nefariously manipulate_ without throwing the entire thing off-kilter," answered Fred.

"How do they work?"

"The smoking one's for this cloth," he said, holding up a black cloth in his left hand before raising his right hand with a white cloth, "while the cold one's for this cloth."

He set the black cloth over the fluffy quill he'd waggled at her face and then dropped the white cloth into his newly-empty hand, revealing the quill nestled in the fabric.

Hermione bit her lip. "It's like the Vanishing Cabinet," she said. "From the Room of Requirement."

"Actually, yes. But another reason why we decided to go with potions instead of charms is so we could ensure nothing _alive_ can be transported. And it won't transport anything unless both cloths are within a ten-foot radius."

Hermione fingered the two swaths of silky fabric and looked back up at Fred. "You don't look pleased."

"We did this out of curiosity," said Fred, "but George and I agreed this product is never going to see the light of day."

She nodded, handing him the two cloths. "Too many things that could go wrong regardless?"

"Indee—"

_**BOOM!**_

* * *

**Because I guess the best way to move forward with one story is to stop working on it and start working on another. Whatever. **


	2. Prologue II

**Prologue II**

* * *

"BLOODY FUCKING HELL, SEAMUS, YOU HALFWIT!"

Ginny gingerly released her death grip on the shelf she'd clutched for dear life when the explosion hit. Neville moaned, having barely the energy to push off the entire rack of Pygmy Puffs that had landed on his back. Ron continued to lie on the floor, covered in Skiving Snackboxes that had toppled onto him, groaning in pain and roaring at Seamus furiously.

"I HOPE THE FIRST THING YOUR UNBORN CHILD DOES WHEN IT POPS OUT IS BLAST YOUR BALLS RIGHT OFF!"

George carefully made his way through the maelstrom, feeling both proud of the standard protection charm on all the products in the event that something like this would happen and the natural frustration that comes with having the whole bloody shop explode. He only had to straighten out a few displays before sending boxes and packages flying back into their proper places.

Seamus Finnegan, unwitting pyrotechnic enthusiast extraordinaire, continued to stand at the entrance of the shop, singed and smoking and looking absolutely dumbstruck, a few of the little orbs of light weakly bouncing around him before waning and dropping onto the floor, still feebly chiming.

"I walked right through with no problem," hissed Ginny, slowly taking note of the various bruises and sore spots. "Ron walked through with no problem. Even Neville managed to walk in without a fuss. But _you_… Merlin forbid someone turn on the _lights_ in a _dark room_, Finnegan, you might spark a bloody nuclear explosion."

Seamus continued to blink blankly. "Erm…"

Ginny helped Neville to his feet, and Ron reluctantly stood up, still growling and snarling under his breath. He'd taken heavier hits, being an Auror and all, but nearly being blown up still wasn't sunshine and daisies.

"Everyone all right?" asked Neville, wincing.

"Well, I can tell you Seamus _won't _be by the time I'm through with him," growled Ron. "Blowing things up left and right like we're back to being bloody first years again."

"Hermione called it sympathetic pregnancy," said George. With one last flourish of his wand, the shop was back in pristine condition. The only telltale signs of an explosion was Seamus, still standing at the doorway. George waved his wand again, lifting the light charm for Victoire with a sigh and eye-roll. "His magic's probably gone all wonky like Padma's since she's carrying his spawn."

"What is sympathetic pregnancy?" asked Neville.

"An insufficient excuse to prevent me from strapping you to a whole crate of Whiz-bangs and setting you alight!" thundered Ron. He thumped Seamus in the chest, dragged him into a nearby chair, and shoved him down into it. "Do not _move_. Do not_ speak_. If possible and as a personal favor to me, one of your frequent victims, don't even fucking _breathe._"

"Neville, I'll explain later," said Ginny. "George, where's Fred?"

George's eyes widened. "Oh, shite."

He practically exploded from the floor, tearing through the shop and vaulting over the counter, nearly smacking into the door to the workroom in his haste.

Ron turned to Seamus, grabbing the top of the Scottish man's head to make sure he focused on Ron's words. "Move an inch, and you'll be in a coma until your kid's born, you hear me?" And then he took off after Neville and Ginny, who were right on George's heels.

George wrenched open the door and nearly flew down the stairs, the chimes and sparkles dancing weakly as though they were also jarred by the explosion. He jumped the last few steps to the very bottom and flung himself around the corner to face the empty workroom. The protective stasis charms shimmered around four out of five workbenches. The fifth, however, was a battleground. Dark blue goop dropped from the ceiling while a pearly, light blue liquid coated a small space on the floor under it. The table itself was a splattered mixture of both substances.

George wiped his hands down his face, feeling the blood drain from his head as he swayed on the spot. "Oh, fuckering fuckity fucking—"

"What?!" demanded Ginny. "What is it?!"

"Fred's supposed to be down here, isn't he?" asked Ron with a heavy sigh.

"And Hermione," said George, wincing.

Ron groaned. "All right. No one take a step without knowing exactly what you're stepping on!"

George waved his wand, and a silvery coyote leapt out from the tip, waiting for George's message. "Bill, bring Charlie, Percy, and Dad to the joke shop. Seamus blew it up, and now Fred and Hermione are missing." He sent the Patronus scampering off with another flick of his wand.

"What were Fred and Hermione working on?" asked Ron, surveying the scene carefully, stepping into the workroom and peering under tables and into spilled boxes.

"Hermione was only visiting, waiting for me and Fred," answered George. "I think he was just explaining it all to her. We've been working on our disappearing trick."

"That doesn't sound at all promising," said Neville, grimacing as Ginny stepped up to the table and frowned down at the stained present.

"It's _not_ dangerous," said George. "Sitting next to Seamus is infinitely more life-threatening. Honest."

"What _is_ it, George?" came the voice of Mr. Weasley.

They all looked back up the stairs to see Mr. Weasley, Charlie, Percy, Bill, and Fleur and a pair of tiny arms wrapped around her neck.

"You brought Victoire?!" demanded Ron.

"In case you 'aven't noticed, Ronald, this was not by choice," grumbled Fleur, scowling darkly at her giggling daughter.

Bill sighed, his hand latched firmly in Fleur's. "Victoire decided to stick all three of us together for her birthday," he sighed. "We haven't found a way to reverse it yet."

"Now what happened here?" asked Charlie.

"Seamus accidentally blew up the shop when he walked through the cute little charm Fred and George rigged on doorways for Victoire," said Ginny.

"Fred and Hermione were down here, tinkering with one of our inventions. Seamus came in and managed to cause an explosion, and when we came down they were gone," said George.

"What was the invention?" asked Mr. Weasley again.

"A Wizarding version of a Muggle trick—you put a cloth over something, wiggle your fingers, and it disappears, reappearing elsewhere," replied George. "But we tinkered with the recipe so it so it can't transport anything _alive_."

"Then where are Fred and Hermione?" asked Percy.

"I don't _know_!" cried George. "Which is why I called you all!"

"George, we're going to have to assume that your Anti-Organic measures didn't work or were canceled out by some other ingredient because that's the only explanation as to why they're gone," said Percy, peering into the cauldrons and checking nearby ingredients.

"They can't have blown up because there'd be…" Charlie trailed off, glancing at the giggling Victoire, hanging from her mother's neck, her little chin propped on Fleur's shoulder to see. "Well, you know what happens when someone's blown up. And I don't see any sign of it."

"Yes, _thank you_, Charlie," huffed Ginny.

"See anything?" asked Ron, looking over Percy's shoulder and into the cauldrons.

Percy pointed at a cauldron dripping deep, violet liquid like silk. "George, what was in the third cauldron?"

"Sh—" George caught himself before glancing at Victoire and then raking his fingers through his hair, his hands shaking. "It was a potion to prolong the Patented Daydream Charms. So they'd last longer and hold better."

Victoire broke the tense atmosphere with a happy squeal. "Fwed! My-nee!"

"I—I think we 'ave found them," said Fleur, looking horrified. Victoire bounced happily on her back.

Ginny had noticed the most abused victim of the potions mishap—a burnt and smoking book that bore remnants of the purple wrapping and silver bow. She'd used a few charms to unwrap what was left of it, wondering what was in it for the potion to damage. As her magic touched it, though, the book seemingly began to regenerate. The chunks that had been blown off were growing back.

"Morgana help us," muttered Ginny, levitating the book higher for them all to see.

"We're gonna need more than Morgana's help for this," said Bill.

It was a storybook of Muggle fairytales, and the front cover held two dark, though very familiar, silhouettes—one with bushy hair and the other with a straight nose. The first page was titled "Cinderella." The picture beneath the title showed a lump on the cushions of a bay window, covered by ragged sheets.

Words had begun to darken the page, and Ginny read aloud the first sentence.

"_Once upon a time, in a land not quite that far away, there lived a young woman whose mind was sharp and clear despite her unruly curls and a young man with hair like the fire in his heart…"_

"But they're…fine, right?" asked Charlie, grimacing at the first paragraph and the continuing sentences that began to appear. "I mean, they're in no immediate danger."

"Oh, yes, because being trapped in a book whose stories we're not even familiar with is _not at all _a precarious situation in which to be," deadpanned Percy.

"What do you mean?" asked Arthur.

"Dad, these may be fairytales, but do we even know how dangerous they are?" Percy waved his wand to flip the pages. "We don't know if Fred and Hermione are going to go through the stories or change them completely. The pages are all _blank_. We're literally just going to be audience to whatever they're going to have to go through."

"Wait, let me try something," said Fleur, stepping forward. She picked up a quill from a nearby table, dipped it into an inkwell and carefully studied the words that continued to appear on the page.

…_did not bode well._

Fleur set quill to paper and wrote, "A knock on the door jerked Hermione out of her fear-soaked brainstorming." The book paused, as if recognizing the words, and Fleur's handwriting shifted so the words matched the style of the text as it integrated the sentence.

…_did not bode well. A knock on the door jerked Hermione out of her fear-soaked brainstorming, and she nearly tripped over herself as she scrambled to answer it. She opened the heavy wooden door and tried to smile courteously at the man…_

"We can change it," breathed George as Hermione greeted the man and exchanged courtesies.

Fleur set her quill to the paper again and wrote, _"'It's quite a fairytale morning, innit, miss?'"_

…"_It's quite a fairytale morning, innit, Miss?" He grinned and winked. _

Fleur was quick. "_Miss Fleur and Miss Ginny send their regards._"

"Brilliant," muttered Ginny, grinning as the text absorbed the words again.

_Hermione nearly choked on the air itself. Her eyes widened, and she wrenched the door open the rest of the way. "Fleur and Ginny? What else did they say?"_

Fleur worked quickly, the former Triwizard Champion fast on the draw. "_They tell you not to worry—they'll get you out as soon as they can._"

But instead of morphing into the text, the ink seemed to evaporate as the book continued its story.

_The man blinked, rubbed an eye, and shook his head. "Sorry, miss. Lost my train of thought for a moment there."_

"There's a limit to 'ow much we can change," said Fleur, biting her lip and twirling the quill between her fingers.

"Should we be changing anything at all?" asked Bill. "If we have the stories end too soon, they might be trapped in the book. Maybe we have to wait and let them play out as they should before they're ejected—like the Daydream Charms. You don't wake up until they're over."

"But what if they're hurt?" asked Ron. "What if they're killed in these stories? Would that kill them in real life too? Would that trap them in the book or kick them out?"

"There're too many what-if's," said Neville. "We should just…let the story play out and intervene when we can."

"Neville's right," said Ginny. "We should also contact Harry or Dean. See if they can help us with these stories so we know what to expect too, and so we can figure out how to write in stuff that'll help Fred and Hermione."

"Plus, Hermione must already know how the stories go, so we'll take her cue," added George.

"What'll _we_ do?" asked Charlie.

"I'll finish closing up the shop," said George. "Take the book back to the Burrow. We'll still have Victoire's party."

"We'll just take turns monitoring the book," said Arthur.

Ron growled and shook his head. "Can I kill Seamus now?"

"No," answered Ginny, gingerly taking the powder-blue book in her hands. "Leave that one for Fred and Hermione. I'm sure they'll need it for stress relief."

"What?" asked Neville, wincing.

"From what I've heard about Muggle fairytales," said Arthur, "there're sashes that choke the wearer to death, shoes that make you dance 'til you bleed, and various forms of incest."

"What the f—"

"Ronald!" barked Fleur before he could finish.

Ron had to physically restrain himself from cursing. "I'll just _maim_ Seamus then. For my own peace of mind."

"If it helps, I highly doubt Hermione would give a book of such morbid tales to a two-year-old," said Bill.

"I really don't need much excuse to want to maim Seamus, mate."


	3. 1

**1  
**_**a girl lost her shoe**_

* * *

Once upon a time, in a land not quite that far away, there lived a young woman whose mind was sharp and clear despite her unruly curls and a young man with hair like the fire in his heart. Though far apart in both nature and nurture, separated by forces strong and vast, the golden strings of their destinies thrummed with promise, a beautiful hum soon to unite them. And on one morning, the hum strengthened into a melody.

For Hermione, the melody came in the gentle, chiming chirps of the birds. Sunlight tickled her eyelids before they slowly opened, though not with excitement for a new day but rather with hesitation and fear. Though bereft of any major decorations, the kitchen was clean and warm. A coarse, sturdy table sat in the middle of the flagstone floor. A large iron stove occupied one end while an enormous fireplace sat opposite it. She was sat upon a wide cushion on the makeshift bay window by the door leading to a back pathway around what was probably a large house.

Hermione looked down at herself—at the old blue dress, so worn and washed out to be almost gray, with soot dusting the hem and knees of her apron. She sat up, running her fingers through her hair, curls escaping the loose bun at the base of her neck as she tore through her consciousness, trying to recall what had happened.

There was the explosion rocking the joke shop down to its foundation, throwing cauldrons up in a whirl of color. There was Fred hauling her into his arms to shield her. There was the disappearing trick, the leftover Daydream Charm stabilizer potion, the storybook—_Fred._

"Oh, no," she murmured, eyes wide and fingers suddenly growing cold. She slid off the worn green cushion, her bare toes flinching from the freezing floor before fumbling with the sturdy work shoes. "Oh, _no._"

She pursed her lips, pulling her hair out of the bun and redoing it into a braid, if only to have something to do with her hands.

Perhaps if all this had to do with the Patented Daydream Charm, maybe it was all a dream. Maybe she need only pinch herself to wake up. But when all her pinching and poking only resulted in a bruised arm and a quicker excuse for her panicked tears to escape, she realized the odds were not in her favor.

If the disappearing trick potions combined with the Daydream Charm stabilizer to somehow launch her into the Muggle storybook she'd bought for Victoire, that meant her current setting (which had been growing more familiar) and her clothing (which she was trying not to dwell on) did not bode well.

A knock on the door jerked Hermione out of her fear-soaked brainstorming, and she nearly tripped over herself to answer it. She opened the heavy wooden door and tried to smile courteously at the man.

"Mornin', miss," he said cheerfully, his thick, blond beard and mustache puffing out with his excitable greeting. "How are you?"

"I'm well, thank you," replied Hermione, trying to recall who he was in the story. He wore thick, sturdy work clothes in browns and dark greens and had a satchel over his shoulder. "How are you?"

"Good, good! It's quite a fairytale morning, innit?" He grinned and winked. "Miss Fleur and Miss Ginny send their regards."

Hermione nearly choked on the air itself. Her eyes widened, and she wrenched the door open the rest of the way. "Fleur and Ginny? What else did they say?"

The man blinked, rubbed an eye, and shook his head. "Sorry, miss, lost my train of thought for a moment there." He pulled a scroll from his satchel, a thick, cream parchment tied with a violet ribbon. "I know it's a bit unconventional, but I didn't want to make you run 'round the manor to answer the front door. This was sent out with the rest of the messenger corps to be distributed posthaste. From the wailing I've heard in the village, it sounds mighty important."

Still frowning warily at the man's earlier comment—which meant Fleur and Ginny knew where she was and had some means of contacting her, unstable though it seemed to be—Hermione accepted the scroll and smiled as kindly as she could. "Thank you, sir. I'll be sure to give this to the lady of the house."

The man winced and _tsk_-ed apologetically. "I'd wish her a good morning, but what she might consider good is likely different from ours. Goodbye, miss."

Hermione tried to laugh, but her smile felt more like a grimace. She cleared her throat and nodded. "Have a good day, sir."

He bowed with a grand flourish and jogged back down to the main path where his horse waited.

Hermione watched them disappear down the lane, fingering the thick paper and the expensive silk ribbon. She knew the official scroll held the catalyst to the story, and in order to keep her bearings within that particular reality, she needed to follow the original thread. It wasn't as if she knew what else to do.

She untied the ribbon, taking care to remember its placement so she could tie it back and pretend she hadn't opened it. True to form, in wide, flowing script, it announced a grand ball held in the honor of—_oh, shite._

Honestly, she should've expected it.

"_His Royal Majesty, Prince Frederick,"_ she hissed, grimacing in physical pain.

So Hermione brewed tea, fetched and boiled eggs from the chicken coop, cut up bread, brought out jam, and prepared the appropriate breakfast fare because that was what she was supposed to do. That was the character she was going to have to play: the meek and humble servant to a cruel stepfamily. She was going to have the play the part of Cinderella.


	4. 2

**2**

* * *

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose as Merlinda's nasal harmonies clashed with Lucinda's screeching melodies to produce what Hermione posited to be the Hell-wrought wailings of the damned. She'd had enough of their voices in the ten minutes she'd spent with both girls in their rooms earlier that day.

Hay-haired Merlinda whined endlessly about how her eggs weren't properly sectioned into colors, as a little of the white had landed over the yolk. She'd nearly upturned her tray as she began a full-scale conniption that the milk in her tea had not perfectly swirled, but had rather already clouded together. Hermione wondered if it was a case of genuine OCD, but when Merlinda girded herself enough to eat, she made such a mess of her plate that Hermione took a few steps back.

Lucinda had incessantly smoothed back her long, black bangs from her high forehead, so when she finally shifted her focus onto her food, she'd nearly pitched it out the window because she'd found a hair in it. It'd taken Hermione a great deal of discipline to keep her tone civil when she pointed out the hair was black and had been a result of Lucinda brushing it over her tray. The girl thankfully ate her breakfast, though not without spitting scathing remarks about "other contaminants."

Hermione had suffered through their abuse and then the subsequent ear-splitting shrieks of excitement after presenting the scroll to her loathsome stepmother, who then mandated a trip to the town square and the dressmaker for proper attire for _Prince Frederick's ball. _

"If I wanted _that_, I would've gone to a gaggle of schoolgirls armed with drapery and half-blunt shears!" cried Lucinda, throwing down a perfectly nice gown and crossing her arms over her chest.

"We may as well have!" added Merlinda, stomping her foot. "You're an incompetent imbecile!"

"Now, _girls_," said Hermione's stepmother, intervening after the appropriate amount of whining, which must have filled the world's quota eight times over. "I think we've wasted enough time as it is."

The statuesque, silver-haired woman held out the two dresses she'd tucked into the crook of her arms only two minutes after their entrance to the dressmaker's shop. Hermione did her best to keep from rolling her eyes.

Her stepmother—whose name Hermione either didn't know or had forgotten—had decided not to ruin the morning by engaging Hermione in any sort of conversation, opting to pretend as if a ghost had laid out her breakfast tray. It was probably for the best. The blasted woman had continued the silent treatment well into the town square.

Lucinda nearly tripped as she hurtled toward her mother to snatch the mint-green monstrosity. "Oh, Mother! That's perfect for me!"

"Almost as perfect as mine is for me!" cried Merlinda, holding her own pink atrocity to her shoulders as she twirled.

For a woman who was so cold and domineering, their mother either knew her daughters very well or channeled what little warmth and light in her personality into making her grown daughters look like they were three years old.

"Why didn't you show these to us sooner instead of wasting our time?!" spat Merlinda, glaring at the poor, button-nosed dressmaker.

The woman glanced at Hermione, exchanging brief, despairing looks, but she rallied herself with the dignity befitting queens. She smoothed out her dress and stepped forward to assist the girls with their fittings.

"Don't think I've forgotten about you," said Hermione's stepmother, foregoing the tedious gesture of _looking_ at Hermione. "I didn't agree to let you tag along for your own gown. Your overwhelming ineligibility negates the mandate of all-eligible-young-women."

Lucinda and Merlinda tittered. The dressmaker shot Hermione another sympathetic look. Hermione herself continued to stare impassively at the opposite wall.

"You'll help us carry the purchases back to the manor, and then you will clean that sty of a house," commanded the woman. "I shouldn't allow that either. Even if your hand was a soap bar and the other a rag, you will _still_ only ever make the manor dirtier."

For a second, Hermione wondered what was it about her that seemed to inspire the constant association with _dirt._

"I'm sorry, Stepmother," she said meekly, staring at the side of the woman's head. "Would you like me to find someone else to help around the house so it will be up to your standards?"

"So I have to pay another person to do _your_ work? My daughters ask me for clothing and jewelry, not an entirely new _person_," she hissed. "I hadn't realized you were that lazy. You will do your work—_thrice_ to be sufficient."

Hermione pursed her lips. The woman _still _wasn't as bad as Umbridge. There was no excuse for her to break. This was as much a test of her acting abilities as it was a mental exercise for dealing with insufferable human beings.

"The official announcement requested that all eligible women are to attend the ball," said the dressmaker innocently. "Are you married, girl?"

Hermione glanced at her stepmother. "No."

"Then you should be there," said the dressmaker blandly, turning back to pinning Lucinda's dress.

Merlinda laughed and shook her head. "Oh, what do you know?" She shot Hermione a haughty smile. "This one quite literally drags dirt and soot with her wherever she goes. Of course she wouldn't be fit to marry anyone, let alone a prince."

This really was a horrible story for her to be thrown in considering her background and her history with incessant dirt references. Hermione was sure that as soon as she imbibed anything alcoholic, she would start seeing everyone in varying hues of pale blond with pointy noises, sneering and hissing "Mudblood" at her, left and right.

"Which reminds me," said Lucinda, coming out from behind the screen in the green dress. "Shouldn't you be waiting outside? You're taking up valuable space."

"And air," added Merlinda.

The two girls cackled and then paused, unaccustomed to laughing together rather than at each other.

Hermione blinked at them. She walked out of the shop, ignoring whatever disdainful look their cold mother was likely throwing at her. She strode right out into the sunlight and breathed in deep. The smell of roasting meat combined with the sharp tang of the herb shop next door and the warm scent of baking bread wafting throughout the bustling town square. Everyone was in a tizzy over the Prince's Ball, to be held that very night, and Fred was probably in the biggest tizzy of them all. For all his bravado and charm, he probably wouldn't take lightly being paraded as a prize brood mare. Hermione could only hope that wherever he was, he wasn't utterly ruining the course of the story.

She took a turn around the major section of the stalls by the fountain, enjoying the vast spectrum of color shimmering along fabrics, flowers, and knickknacks being sold. As she rounded the corner of a wooden stall selling puppets, she suddenly reared back as a horse and carriage thundered past her, forcing her to drop the parcels before she was trampled. After nigh on seven years of lugging giant textbooks up and down a castle, Hermione could easily maneuver all the packages heaped on her, but being run over was a bit of a deal breaker. Huffing in anger, Hermione crouched down to retrieve her fallen parcels, glaring at the back of the disappearing carriage.

A vague feeling of recall reverberated through her spine just as someone jogged up beside her.

"Talk about those royals, huh? Just because they own a few thousand acres, suddenly they're king of the land."

Hermione rolled her eyes and looked up at Fred's cheeky wink. Dressed in a worn red shirt and brown pants with his red hair in disarray, she thought with relief that he probably wasn't the prince in the story.

"You have no room to talk, Fred Weasley, as I distinctly remember you on your broom, flying too close to people to scare them," said Hermione, trying to take back some of the packages.

"Is that how you treat someone who's come through hell and high water to find you and then come to your aid?" he asked, keeping hold of the slightly crumpled parcels.

"Hell and high water?" laughed Hermione.

"Yeah!" he cried in dismay, looking around surreptitiously. "I had to escape a _castle_, Hermione—complete with a moat! Apparently, I'm some sort of _prince _here."

Hermione resisted the urge to groan and slap her forehead.

"It would've been all good and well if there weren't twelve psychotic manservants and one scary valet and a queen who _actually _started _squeaking_ when I made it clear I wasn't amenable to being paraded through a mob of prospective wives," he hissed, panic forcing his words to come out in rapid fire. "Why can't I find myself a wife? Is this part of the culture? Where the hell are we, Herms?"

"One: Don't call me that," she said, dragging him away from the street, towards a shaded and less populated area of the square. "Two: Your potions must've thrown us in the book of Muggle fairytales I got for Victoire. I don't know if we're unconscious and simply dreaming within the reality of the stories or if we've actually been transported into the book itself—"

Fred snorted and shifted his hold on the packages. "This is what Muggles think is the epitome of romance? Which fairytale are we in?"

Hermione blinked. He seemed to taking the situation quite well. "Er, we've become characters in _Cinderella_. I'm Cind—"

"Cindy-'Mione."

"—and you're the prince," she finished through gritted teeth, glaring at his smirk.

He scowled. "More like the prized pig to be auctioned. This is the one with the princess that was transformed by a pumpkin—"

"A fairy godmother."

"And she rides the pumpkins, right? To the prince who kisses her so well it knocks her shoe off? If you know what's going to happen, why can't we skip over to the end of the story? That should get us out of this mess, right?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Fred, we have to follow the story as it should be so we at least know what to expect. If we deviate, we run the risk of changing the story irreparably. I don't know if it'll correct itself or if it runs with the improvisations and warps it into an entirely new ending. Then we won't have a clue what to do."

"Bloody hell—are those guards wearing blue and gold? They might be from the castle—let's go over here." He tugged her down a row of shops shaded by streams of multicolored cloth.

"Look, all you have to do is go back to the castle, get dressed, and go to your ball—"

"My _doom._"

"—and I'll meet you there. We can't linger here," she said, checking over her shoulder. She tugged him further along, trying to skirt her way around the block to get back to the area of the dress shop. "And there's one more thing."

"You know, I suddenly find myself hating those particular words," he said, loping alongside her. "It connotes something small when it's probably some sort of cataclysmic detail to ruin our lives."

"This is only the first story in the book."

His lips scrunched up as his eyes narrowed. "I knew it! And how many are there?"

"Six."

The packages in Fred's hands jerked up as if he'd just managed to catch himself before he threw his hands up in frustration. "What did I tell you? _Cataclysmic._"

Hermione winced and would've reacted further if it wasn't for a portly, balding, blue-brocaded whirlwind that descended upon them. If they hadn't been in a scripted fairytale reality, whomever had just accosted them would've been a pile of raw meat in the corner. But since neither of them had a wand and were painfully aware of their circumstances rather than their surroundings, all Fred and Hermione did was grip the parcels even tighter. Mad-Eye Moody would've had a conniption before killing them himself.

"No, no, no, no, _cataclysmic_ would be what happens if your father and mother—_oy vey, your mother_—find out where you've been all this time instead of preparing for the ball," said the man, speaking in panicked, rapid-fire hits as he snatched packages off of Fred and heaped them back onto Hermione, who stumbled to keep everything from toppling off again.

"Oi—would you just—what—" spluttered Fred as he tried to squirm away from the surprisingly squirrely older man. "I'm trying to help—"

"Help?!" cried the man in dismay, his voice skipping to higher levels as he threw his arms out and nearly upset Hermione's treacherous stack of parcels. "Help what?! Hasten my impending heart attack, stroke, or general demise?!"

"Could you _please_ take it down a notch?" hissed Fred as he lunged to stabilize the tower in Hermione's arms before it toppled over. "Lionel, mate, you need to get la—"

"Thank you _so much_ for your help, Your Royal Highness," said Hermione quickly, cutting off Fred before he could send the man even further into his downward spiral. "I-I'm so sorry to have inconvenienced you."

Fred pursed his lips and glared up at the sky. "You're welcome, young constituent," he deadpanned.

Lionel shot them both a confused and suspicious look.

"I suppose I shall see you at the ball tonight, Prince Frederick," said Hermione, trying to shoot him a meaningful expression without arousing too much of Lionel's already-mounting suspicions.

"I look forward to it," sighed Fred. "Erm, until then."

Hermione awkwardly curtsied and scurried off to find her stepfamily, trying not to chuckle at the tangent Lionel began as soon as she walked off.

"One hour, he says! One hour! And I go and give him an hour and a half, and next thing I know, he's escaped the castle—did you know you had half the coachmen thinking you were running off for good?!"

"If I was going to do it for good, I would've set an empty section of the castle on fire as a distraction to make sure I could get enough of a head start so you all would never bloody find me."

"May as well just set fire to _me_ and be done with it for all the good you're doing to my sanity!"


	5. 3

**3**

* * *

"…the ceiling corners, scrub the base moldings, polish the mahogany panels in the bedrooms, dust the door frames, scrub the mortar between the tiles, dust the walls behind paintings and tapestries, tighten the screws of curtain rods or replace them if need be, check the throw pillows for loose threads, patch the…"

Hermione nodded dutifully though she paid the minimum attention to her stepmother's list of tasks to be accomplished before the end of the night. She had been forced to brush and tame Lucinda's hair at the sisters' gaudy vanity and excessively enormous mirror. The girl's hair was even more recalcitrant than Hermione's and required a strange formula of oils, brushing, and pinning. Hermione had never thought to clean or maintain most of what she was rattling off, which meant a lot, considering her parents were methodical when they fell into bouts of extreme house cleaning.

Jean Granger would blast Hall & Oates as she vacuumed and swept the floor while J.R. wailed along as he dusted every horizontal surface of the house above the floor. But her reminiscing stuttered as a gauzy, pink shawl suddenly drifted around her neck as Merlinda pranced up behind her and wrapped the pink fabric tighter around Hermione's shoulders.

The blonde hummed contemplatively, tilting her head to the side. "If you went to the ball, pink would suit you best."

The stepmother's drawling voice ceased its litany. Lucinda glared at her sister through the mirror.

"Why are you wasting energy speculating on what that would look good when there'll never be a chance of such a thing happening?" asked Lucinda, barely sparing a glance at Hermione, who only continued her task of brushing the oily, scented curls.

Merlinda tugged the shawl until it slipped off Hermione. "Yes, yes, pink. It brings out the commoner in your skin tone. Makes you look properly poor and naïve."

Lucinda snorted and turned back to the mirror to apply a garish rouge. "She'd never be able to brave pastels. Look at her—she's best suited to grey to match all the soot."

Merlinda gave her another once-over and flounced away to play with the rest of the accessories that littered the sisters' bedroom floor. "Grey or brown—she must match the soot on her dress or the dirt on her face."

The girls tittered again. Hermione managed to tune it all out. The insults held a lot less sting when the women insulting her really had no idea who she was. It was a little freeing, actually, to be able to hear such mean words thrown at her and being able to let it roll off her back.

Hermione let her mind wander away from the room once more, to how she was supposed to summon her fairy godmother. Cinderella had been humiliated to a breaking point and escaped to weep over her life, but Hermione's mindset and emotional state hardly aligned with the character's. Would the fairy simply have to appear on her own?

Was it enough to be at the right place at the right time? Would the story follow its formula without the necessity of her and Fred playing the parts to fullness? Or would they have to suffer through them precisely as they'd been written?

Anxious at the prospect of literally becoming the characters themselves, Hermione missed the way the stream of chores had tapered off—until hands slammed down on the dresser and her two stepsisters halted their chatter with a squeal.

"You have been _unsettling_ all day, girl," hissed her stepmother, leaning close enough for Hermione to smell the stinging musk of her perfume. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

Hermione cleared her throat and steadily met the icy blue gaze. "My apologies, Stepmother. It's been a strange da—"

"I—don't—care."

Hermione blinked at the harsh, bracing delivery, aware of the sudden tension that dropped into the room. Her fingers stilled in Lucinda's hair.

"Don't think for a _moment_ that I'm not aware of what's brewing behind those disgustingly innocent eyes," hissed the older woman. "You think to come to the ball and bask in the opulence of something you shall never achieve—but I know you're only going to sneak off and appeal to some county official to restore your father's will."

Hermione frowned and opened her mouth to dispute, but the woman leaned even closer, her voice dropping even further.

"The law is the law, girl. Upon a husband's death, all his assets pass to his spouse—_me_. This decrepit, _disgusting_ hovel fit only for the dirty bloodlines claimed by you and and your mother will eventually be sold and rebuilt into something _useful._ But if you're so intent on reclaiming it as your inheritance and holding onto this pathetic mound of dirt, then perhaps I shall leave it to waste away with you."

Hermione extracted her hands from Lucinda's hair, one hand already death-clamped onto the hairbrush while the other was at risk of tearing the other girl's hair out.

"You keep referring to me and mine as nothing but dirt, Stepmother, but despite the hurt it may inflict, all I can do is remember what my mother told me," said Hermione softly, struggling to keep her voice level and devoid of harshness. Her real life was leaking into the fictional world around her as her nose and eyes burned. "Even the Bible claimed man was made from dirt and dust because it is the only thing in the world from which _something beautiful can grow_."

Her stepmother reared back as if Hermione had struck her, lip curling back into a sneer. Hermione took a few deep breaths to steady her anger and let the trembling in her body abate. Neither of them spoke for several long seconds.

"That doesn't change the fact that you'll be sweeping that dirt out of this house all night," said the woman. "And hopefully, you'll sweep yourself right out of here along with the rest of the trash. Don't bother coming to help us prepare. Wouldn't want you to ruin our dresses, after all. They're still _clean_."

And she turned on her heel and stormed out of the girls' bedroom.

Hermione took another steadying breath and turned back to Lucinda's hair, meticulously taming the bush and righteously stoking the fires of her anger.

Despite being thrown into a fictional world of potentially dangerous stories without knowing if her in-story death meant _actual _death, a portion of her consciousness was still aware it was the second of May—and all that connoted. Victoire's birth falling on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts was a balm for the memory, but it wasn't an instantaneous healing spell. The people they'd lost were still gone, the scars that'd formed still held phantom aches, and the hatred that burned the people left ashes and remains.

It'd been a long time since Hermione had faced that kind of verbal abuse. All things considered, it hadn't been the worst kind either. When she'd been weathering the worst of it, it hadn't hurt as much. What was a slap in the face in the midst of a beating?

But as she finished brushing through Lucinda's strands with a vigor better suited to digging, she caught sight of the gruesome scar on her forearm and wondered why the magic didn't bother hiding her scar. Weren't they unfitting for a fairytale princess? Wasn't it too morbid for a lighthearted children's story? Were little girls allowed to emulate women with turbulent histories? Wouldn't it be too much work for the fairy godmother to cover her scars?

For all the praise and glory heaped upon the unwillingly-named Golden Trio, there was a notoriety that lurked alongside. Children looked up to them for being heroes and wished to "go on adventures just like Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger." But they were never adventures. Everything they'd gone through had been a matter of moral obligation and life or death, not an enjoyable frolic in the forest. There were many parents who understood that, and while they seemed to be thankful for the part the three of them had played in the nineties, they were wary of the trio. They wanted their children to emulate the golden characteristics—Harry's bravery, Ron's loyalty, and Hermione's cleverness—but not their actions.

The years following the Second Wizarding War were marked by caution and paranoia, which was warranted but detrimental. Children were encouraged to stay home, be safe, be cautious, and be inconspicuous. Never call attention. Head down, mouth shut.

And when a little girl in Diagon Alley had pointed and chirped, "Mum, look! It's Hermione Granger," Hermione had watched as the young mother blanched, blushed, smiled briefly but gratefully at Hermione, and then quickly hushed and hurried her daughter down the road.

Frankly, Hermione quite preferred it over the blind praise. At least those people gave weight to the darkness and the danger; they were the ones who wouldn't easily forget.


	6. 4

_**Apologies for the delay; it's been a bit of a trial to get my laptop back. It's been a bit of a situation, homies.**_

* * *

**4**

* * *

After suffering the older woman's unfounded tirade, Hermione essentially turned off her ears to whatever else her stepfamily threw at her. After weathering seven years of her classmates' chattering whenever she studied in the common room, it was hardly an exercise.

She positioned herself in the kitchen later that evening, hoping the three women wouldn't deign to visit her sooty little corner and dirty their pretty hems before the ball. As soon as she heard the telltale stomping and squealing, she picked up the broom and began to sweep—sweep like she wanted a tornado to form and take her to a faraway land of yellow paths and green structures perhaps.

But all it did was summon a witch.

"I expect the chores to be finished tonight, _brat_," said her stepmother from the door of the kitchen, staring down her nose. "Else it will be lashes first thing in the morning."

"Nothing like the fresh smell of blood to wake you up?" asked Hermione, ceasing her sweeping and leaning against the handle of the broom.

Taken aback, the older woman's bitter sneer disappeared for only a moment—a moment that gave Hermione a glimpse of the woman behind the hatred.

"Only _yours_ will ever give me any pleasure, child," said the woman as she spun on her heel.

"Shall I go ahead and prepare my back then?" called Hermione one more time. "You'll likely punish me regardless of whether or not I complete your list."

The woman glanced over her shoulder, her aristocratic chin making a perfect arch over her shoulder. "Do what you want, for it will never change who you are—filth." And she stalked away, heels clicking on the polished wooden floors.

Hermione waited until the front door slammed shut, cutting off the giggles and intermittent squeals. Then she gripped the broom so tightly, both hands a foot apart on the handle, ready to crack it over her knee in sheer misplaced aggression. Instead of going through with it, however, Hermione threw it down on the near-pristine floor and growled into the silence.

It was time.

Her stepfamily was gone, twilight blanketed the horizon, bracing for the tendrils of nighttime. She stormed out to the charming but still slightly overgrown garden surrounding the old stone fountain, cracked in spots and covered with patches of moss in others.

Hermione stood at its edge, her knees brushing the cold stone as she stared down at the murky water. She wasn't about to break into song over her reflection, but she still felt the same stirrings of trepidation, frustration, and sorrow. Her stepmother's words continued to echo in her mind, in the varying scornful voices of her past.

Should she be wishing she could go to the ball? Should she be bemoaning her predicament? Was her mental and emotional state even of consequence if the story was to play out the way it was meant to? But as the night continued to creep forward across the sky with no sign or sparkle of the singular, most magical entity of the story, Hermione's anxiety began to clamber forward. What would happen if she never appeared? Would Hermione have to magic her own dress somehow and walk to the bloody ball herself?

She flexed her fingers, wishing the story had some way of incorporating her own magical ability if it was so insistent on making her suffer through it all.

The minutes seemed to run past even if Hermione didn't have a clock face to mark it, until darkness and the swirls and stars took over the night.

"Hello?" she called, sounding utterly foolish.

The crickets literally, figuratively, and cheerfully chirped.

"To be quite honest, I don't really want to attend the ball," she muttered into the empty, moonlit garden. The outside lantern hadn't been lit, so she could be talking to potential bandits in the bushes, but she couldn't bring herself to care anymore. "I would love to leave this place, this story, and just…go home. I'll be out of your hair and there'll no longer be a source of conflict to worry yourself about."

"Then why not ask to go home?"

With a gasp, Hermione jumped and spun around to see the old crone with her shabby cloak and gnarled cane. Hunched over, she barely stood as tall as Hermione's shoulder, but there was an unmistakable aura of power that had Hermione stepping backward.

"Erm—"

"You do not need to do anything or go anywhere you don't want to, let alone some stuffy ball even the guest of honor himself would rather not attend," continued the woman in her shaky but no less lively voice.

Hermione balked. "I didn't think it'd be possible—is it?"

"Well, of course not, dearie, but it always pays to be truthful with your desires," she said, shrugging. She peered up at Hermione with milky blue eyes, grinned a dirty smile, and winked, though it was barely discernible amidst the crow's feet. "Don't you agree?"

"Yes," answered Hermione, sounding a bit pathetic, much to her chagrin. "But what's the point, if it only leads you to disappointment?"

"There's a difference," said the crone, "between honesty and self-deprecation. You have a tendency to dance the line closer to the latter than the former."

"Better to have lowered expectations than disappointing results," said Hermione, almost under her breath.

"Better to see over the horizons than limit yourself to a prison of your own making," countered the woman. "Now, speaking of truthfulness…"

She tapped the long stick against the cobblestone path with a spark that blossomed into a swirl of magic. The old crone melted away into a bright and youthful visage—a strangely familiar one that had Hermione's eyes widening a bit. The fairy godmother's short, blonde curls belayed Hermione's trepidation, and the enormously fluffy pale blue ball gown and glass wand banished any lingering negative reaction.

"Much better, don't you think?" asked her fairy godmother cheerfully, grinning from ear to ear.

Hermione swallowed. "Erm, quite."

The grin vanished. "If you were a husband, you'd be in the doghouse."

"You look wonderful," laughed Hermione. "Utterly resplendent."

"That's the spirit!" crowed the magical lady, clapping her hands excitedly. "Now we've got to get you on my level, don't we? This is _splendid_! Have you any kumquats?"

"I don't think those are native to the country—"

"Now what did I say about limiting ourselves?"

"I mean, _science_—"

"—is just a colder and more boring form of magic, dearie! Now—_kiwis_?"

* * *

_**So as you can see, I've borrowed from many different iterations of **_**Cinderella_ because why the heck not?_**


	7. 5

**5**

* * *

Fred tugged at his blasted collar and tried to surreptitiously adjust the sash across his chest, but judging from the low hiss from the Queen's throne behind him, it wasn't surreptitious enough.

He _really_ should've practiced his wandless and wordless spell casting more.

"What about that one then?" asked Lionel softly, leaning closer to his shoulder and making Fred twitch. "She's got a kind laugh and a warm smile—"

"And a high kick that could decapitate me if I didn't laugh at just the right moment," replied Fred blandly.

When they first spilled into the lavishly-decorated ballroom—_every bloody eligible bachelorette in the kingdom_, which he had to thank every star he could name that theirs was a small kingdom not a continent—he'd been floored by how many gorgeous women populated the land. The novelty wore off quickly, however, as their elaborate dances and exaggerated flourishes blurred his vision in a kaleidoscope of brightly colored dresses and gleaming decorations.

Lionel sighed, but it sounded more like a whine. "Then how about her? She's—"

"Looking ready to haul me into a broom closet and make good on providing the kingdom the heir my parents so desire from me."

Lionel spluttered and choked. Fred heard a low chuckle coming from the King's throne. He stood on the steps leading up to the royal thrones, like a silk-adorned suit of armor; it wasn't lost on him, the irony that he stood where court jesters had historically been situated.

"And that one there," said Fred, jerking his chin just a bit, "with the sky-high décolletage and constantly lowered lashes—"

"All right, I get the point," said Lionel. "Perhaps…"

"Perhaps nothing, mate, they may be eligible, but that's a relative term, innit?"

Lionel's dumbstruck silence had Fred glancing to his side to see the valet's horror.

Fred rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. "Apologies, let me rephrase. Their eligibility is relative to their circumstances and desires, however, their _suitability_ for marriage into the royal family remains a point of contention regardless of my choice tonight. Better?"

The puce in Lionel's face began to clear as he took deep breaths and turned back to the expanse of the ballroom.

Hermione was bloody late, and Fred's internal jokes and personal entertainment were running out.

The orchestra kicked up the third waltz at a quicker tempo, seemingly wanting the night to progress faster, to Fred's gratefulness. The entire room whirled at an alarming rate, and Fred tugged on his collar again, another bead of sweat tickling the side of his neck.

Had she been abducted by bandits or enemies of the state? Did the bloody fairytale turn into an political action/suspense saga? Had her carriage lost a wheel and fallen off a ravine? Had she been transported into a new story because the pages had ripped when the workroom exploded and so the pages of her story had been relocated?! Had she been rescued from the bloody storybook by their alleged friends and then decided to leave him in there to suffer for a bit longer out of some misplaced sense of payback after all the shenanigans of his youth?!

The music hit its crescendo right as the enormous, gilded double doors at the top of the grand staircase swung open to let in an absolute vision in dazzling periwinkle blue. It shouldn't have shocked him, honestly, considering she wore the same color over six years ago—with the same shy eyes, proud smirk, and sure and slow descent. Her entrance was a bit grander this time, though no less dramatic and certainly no less of a statement.

He wasn't entirely sure if it was his dry eyes or the ostentatious decorations, but he'd swear she was bloody _sparkling_ with magic.

Fred didn't even feel his face split into an enormous grin as she descended the stairs amidst the shocked lull of the ballroom as every turned to watch her.

"Finally," he muttered, exhaling completely as he stepped off the stairs and strode toward, the dancers parting to let him through.

He met her at the bottom of the staircase, holding out his hand to help her down the last step. He saw a glimpse of a sparkling glass shoe as her voluminous skirts kicked out. She took a long curtsy as she reached the marble floor, and he hoped his deep bow was up to royal standards.

"More tulle and taffeta this time?" he asked softly as they both straightened up.

"And what do you know of tulle and taffeta, Fred Weasley?" she asked, still smiling.

"I know that it suits you just as well as silk, darling. Certainly worth the inordinately long wait," he teased. "I believe this is the portion in which we take a turn 'round the floor?"

"I know I shouldn't be so nervous since I've done this before, but last time I wasn't the complete center of attention," muttered Hermione. Her deep inhale was a bit stuttered and unsteady, but her hand was firm as she accepted his.

Fred scoffed, leading her out to the middle of the ballroom floor. "Don't be so vain now. You're sharing the spotlight with _me_, aren't you? You're just the collateral damage, darling."

Hermione snorted as he pulled her to his front, hesitated a moment to let the orchestra catch on, and they fell into a waltz.

"Besides, you haven't done this before," he said.

"I distinctly remember waltzing at the Yule Ball _and_ Bill and Fleur's wedding—"

"No," said Fred, spinning her out and catching her into a dip. "You've never danced with _me_."

Hermione laughed and rolled her eyes. "I've been so deprived."

Fred grinned. "Damn straight, witch."

Hermione's smile morphed into one of steely determination. "All right, enough. I'm late so we don't have much time for me to run through the entire story and my theory on how this may all play out—"

"Isn't the jig up at midnight?"

"Yes, you remembered?"

"It's only nine," chuckled Fred a bit nervously. "Were you planning on lecturing me on the ins and outs of trans-dimensional magical transportation for three hours?"

Hermione smiled demurely, but he could see the scowl in her eyes. "And were you planning on waltzing like this for three hours straight? It's a bit taxing, no?"

He grinned and spun her out again, twirling her around the perimeter of the dance floor as the other guests shuffled backward to give them room, Hermione's dress skimming the very edge of the crowd.

"I'll have you know I've built quite a reputation for my stamina," he said, pulling her back to his chest.

"Don't be crass," she hissed. "This is still a children's book."

"Which is why you've got to lighten up a bit, eh? Surely your unmatched intelligence can spare ten minutes for banalities?"

"Banalities?" echoed Hermione, eyebrows rising. "All right then—good evening, kind sir. How has the day treated you?"

"Being a prince is great, thank you very much," he said pompously. "I just love being quizzed on the nuanced protocols of royal conduct at public events, especially events regarding _courtship_, especially events regarding _my _bloody courtship. I've been having an absolute _ball_, Hermione."

Hermione genuinely tried to stifle her laughter, but she wasn't very successful. The music swooped, and Fred took the opportunity to lift her high into the air and catch her into a dip. The genuine sound of her laughter brought him a greater sense of relief than her arrival. If Granger, who stressed out about something as mediocre as incorrectly writing the wrong date on a letter could laugh in a situation like this, then all would be well.

"On a serious note, Fred, you need to be careful. Our presence and self-awareness in this story can easily send the plot awry, and I won't be able to navigate to the ending properly."

"My, if that's what you consider smalltalk, I'd hate to hear a full-fledged discussion."

Hermione's lips disappeared into a thin line, and Fred grinned. "A part of me truly missed you," she said, bland as the macarons on the buffet lines.

Fred wasn't to be dissuaded, however. His entertainment for the night had finally arrived, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth. All right, perhaps that wasn't the best phrase to use whilst holding a beautiful woman in his arms, but the principle stood. He hadn't seen her in days, and there was only so much decorum he could stomach before he started twitching to set things on fire or feed innocent passerby much-less-innocent fare.

"Yes, I know, the same part that sees the color in life," he said, tossing his head back proudly.

Hermione scoffed. "No, the part that needs an outlet for misplaced aggression."

"So I incite such fiery passion in you, darling? Oh, my, I thought this was a children's book."

The blush that bloomed across her cheeks and down her neck incited his own burst of laughter, and he had to stifle a yelp of pain instead when he felt a hard pinch at his side, though he scarcely remembered her hands moving away from his shoulder and fingers.

"A children's book that will likely only spit us back out into our reality if we play through these stories properly," hissed Hermione, Wronski-Feint-ing him back into the seriousness of the situation.

"So why can't we just speed up the endings?" he asked with a sigh, glancing over her shoulder to see the King and Queen's face-splitting grins.

His eyes slipped back onto Hermione's face as her eye twitched. "Because we can _easily send the plot awry, and I won't be able to navigate to the ending properly_," she hissed through her teeth. "I don't know if this will be like traveling through time, one action causing a domino effect that was already preordained or will irreparably damage the future."

"It's a bloody storybook, though," said Fred. "How irreparably can we damage it, especially since all these stories have magic in it somehow?"

"Have you tried to cast a spell since we arrived?" she asked, watching as the crowd gave in and began to spill onto the ballroom floor with them. "We've become our characters, Fred, we can't handle magic the way we normally could outside these stories."

His voice dropped as more and more couples danced closer to them. "So you already know the endings to these stories—let's just speed up the process a bit, yeah? We dance 'til your shoe falls off, and your getaway squash—"

"Pumpkin."

"Still in the squash family—gets squashed in and of itself—"

"For Merlin's sake."

"—and then the kingdom goes on a manhunt for you and your strangely-sized foot to match that seemingly-uncomfortable shoe you're dancing around in—woman, are you sure you wouldn't like to sit down a minute, they really didn't look all that comfortable."

"No, they're actually quite nice, but, yes, the prince searches for the maid with the only foot the shoe will fit, not because I have a strangely-shaped foot, thanks, but because the shoe is enchanted to fit only me and will adjust _against_ someone else's."

"And yet you manage to leave it behind? Did you kick it off or summat?"

Hermione glowered at him briefly. "The magic caused it to fall off as a way for the prince to find Cinderella—"

"Cinder-'Mione."

"Call me that again, Fred Weasley."

"Cin—"

"It's a storytelling device, all right?" she snipped, eyes darting around briefly. "I can't reveal my scullery maid identity in the middle of everyone like this, so we can't end the story here at midnight. You have to come find me."

"Just tell me where you'll be then, and I'll come straight—"

"No, the kingdom has to be searched in its entirety to prove a point to my stepfamily that I'm quite literally the last woman in the kingdom for you to marry—"

"Circe's sake, Granger, that'll take weeks!"

Hermione burst out laughing, though the wide set of her eyes told him she was faking it to cover up his exclamation. "Would you keep it down?!" she hissed between her smile.

"How can you bring me down when I feel like I'm soaring in your arms, Herms?"

If Hermione could hit him in the face with a newspaper, Fred knew she would've. He could only laugh at her obvious restraint.

"In all seriousness, love—"

"May we cut in, Your Grace?"

Fred's eye twitched. "Lionel—"

But the squirrely valet had already whisked Hermione out of Fred's grip, her replacement still beautiful, but somehow duller in Hermione's wake. "Erm, hello."

"Good evening, Your Grace," said his new partner demurely, dropping into a deep curtsy that he almost mirrored out of reflex but just barely managed to bow instead. "How do you do?"

"Do what?"

The young lady gave him a confused smile, but his attention followed her eye to her earring to Hermione and the King dancing just behind her shoulder. Fred caught Hermione's nervous smile and now-stiff posture as the King whirled her around, likely trying to bring her out of her newfound shell. She was lucky it wasn't the Queen spinning her about the dance floor; she'd certainly get a proper interrogation—about her ancestry, wedding bouquet preferences, and child-rearing strategies.

"…sports, Your Grace?" asked his new partner.

"Yes, I play dozens of sports," answered Fred.

Her confused smile turned worried. "Your Grace, I asked about the ease of transport with the new canal construction."

Fred licked his lips. "Right. It, erm, really facilitates the fraternization between kingdoms for such a thing as sports."

"But it's not bridging us to any neighbors, Your Grace, it's within the kingdom…?"

And that was his cue. "My lady, it's been a stimulating conversation, but I must make my apologies. I'm being summoned by my mother."

And he released her, bowed, and shot off to the thrones to head off the King and Hermione before they could reach the meddlesome Queen.

"Mother, Father," he said, intercepting Hermione's introduction and taking her hand. "Our one dance was interrupted."

And he whisked her off to the middle of the dance floor again, despite the Queen's incessant squeaking following after him.

"Fred, that was surprisingly rude—"

"Don't leave me again, woman. I'm not built for this kind of foppishness. I'm at war with trying to keep from inciting a civil war and trying to kick it off myself with a round of fireworks."

Hermione snorted. "Come on, let's move this discussion out to the gardens before your valet decides to play musical chairs on us again."

She took control of the waltz, leading them out of the French doors and into the nighttime garden. The gurgle and splash of a nearby fountain took over the babbling ambience of the ball.

Fred spun her once more before tugging her back and tucking her arm into the crook of his elbow. "Now, should we change the cadence of our conversation to something more poetic and romantic to fit this atmosphere?" he asked, grinning and winking.

Hermione rolled her eyes and poked his rib with her free hand, making him yelp. "Be serious, Fred. You need to be aware of the trajectory of each story so we can breeze through them all at a quick pace and get out of this book."

He reached through a bush to pluck a white rose and offer it to her. "True, but that shouldn't stop us from appreciating bits of the stories, eh?"

Hermione rolled her eyes and accepted the rose anyway. "Of course, but I prefer appreciating them from the comforts of my living room—not in the midst of all this."

"Yes, but now you can feel like a princess five—six?—times over," said Fred.

Suddenly, a long gonging echoed throughout the castle grounds, and Hermione's and Fred's heads shot up to the great bell clocktower. It must have been much later than either of them remembered or the story was above and beyond the standard laws of physics and temporality.

"I can feel like a princess for another eleven chimes, I suppose," sighed Hermione, pulling her hand from Fred's arm and picking up her skirts. "Time for me to bow out. You know what to do, don't you, Fred?"

"Yes, yes. Find your shoe, get everyone's smelly feet into it until I can find you, and then we move onto the next story," he said blandly, tucking his hands into his pockets. "I'm ecstatic. Should you save yourself the literal trip and just hand me your shoe now?"

"And give you the opportunity to skip cardio again, Weasley?" Hermione grinned and took off.

"Card—woman, this is not the time for exercise!" yowled Fred, throwing out his arms in disbelief. "If you're going to be the death of me, you may as well save someone else the effort and actually execute me yourself!"

"Drama prince!"

Fred took a long inhale and a short exhale before he leaned forward into a run. "Bloody witch."

* * *

_**I have admittedly confused myself with my chapter count. Two prologues, five chapters; seven chapters in total.  
Sorry, y'all.  
**_**_Sorry, self._**


	8. 6

_**Oh, my dear friends. Brace yourselves. This is my most favorite chapter, by far.**_

* * *

**6**

* * *

"A shoe?!" screeched Lionel, voice ricocheting through the expansive library. Fred glimpsed a few startled birds bursting out of the trees outside the enormous windows.

The Queen, also, reached an octave Fred hadn't known his ears could even register. "You want to hoist the foundation of your reign upon the search of a woman based on the fit of her _shoe_?!"

Lionel spluttered incoherently before they eventually coalesced into real words. "God forbid you search for the woman based on a description of her overall appearance!"

"You're telling us," the King began, fingers steepled as he sat at the head of the long rectangular table in the middle of the rows of bookcases, "that this nameless woman with admittedly impeccable grace but questionable punctuality and ill-fitting footwear will be able to stand at your side and lead a kingdom?"

Fred, hands at his back, dressed to the nines in his "full princely attire"—with which he had requested his valets to dress him in those specific terms because he hardly knew the proper vocabulary—only smiled. "If the shoe fits."

He would forever carry those three frustratedly flabbergasted expressions in his heart. The King had abandoned decorum and dropped his head onto his arms; the Queen squeaked and raked her hands through her hair, tugging it further out of its styled updo. Lionel… Well, the poor valet may have been seconds from an apoplectic fit.

"Enough of your jokes!" cried Lionel.

"Just because it was a funny statement didn't mean I was joking, my good sir," said Fred. "That woman could lead a kingdom with her eyes closed whilst walking backward."

"How can you say such a thing?" asked the Queen. "You'd only first met her last night. How could you possibly know and be so certain?"

"What _spell_ has this woman put upon you, Your Grace?" asked Lionel, a tone break away from whimpering.

Fred barely held back his snort.

The King lifted his head from his arms and rested his chin on his propped-up hand, his eyes landing on his wife as he smiled cheekily. "Perhaps the same spell that convinced me your mother had the right head on her shoulders and the right feet under her to lead the people?"

The Queen froze and turned to face her husband, her frantic expression melting into fondness. "That hardly counts, love. We'd known each other for years before."

"More like we knew of each others' existences for years until we finally spoke properly," said the King. "Sometimes it only takes a moment, eh, son?"

"I suppose we were both fortunate that we didn't put our feet in our mouths during those fateful conversations," said Fred, pulling his hands from behind his back to reveal the ornate wooden box that held the glass shoe.

Lionel was the only one to catch Fred's pun, judging by his pinched expression. "Please, Your Majesties, you're not going to support this—this wild goose chase?"

The Queen sighed. "It's… It's undeniably romantic—"

Fred only smirked as Lionel nearly tripped over himself. "Y-Your Majesty—"

"He's finally made a decision about his marriage," said the King. "This is what we hoped would come out of hosting the ball. Mind you, this treasure hunt was not ideal—"

"Neither was a son like me, I'm sure," said Fred, winking.

"Darling, the moment you managed to stand on your own two legs was in the same week as your first naked rampage across the palace," said the Queen. "We've learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to you."

Both Fred and the King snorted with laughter, but Lionel covered his face with his hands and sighed.

The King stood up, walked up to Fred, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Son, we give you our blessing—"

"To put this shoe on _every_ woman to have attended the ball?" wept Lionel.

"Well, we have to give each and every one of them a fair shot," said Fred, giving the balding man a sly smile. "After all, it was your idea to invite them all for the same reason, wasn't it?"

* * *

"Lionel, do stop whining like that. You're not a dying animal."

Fred, with one hand clamped around the gold plated handle and the other braced against the blue velvet ceiling of the royal coach to hold his arse down on the red silk cushion, couldn't help but let his cheer maintain his literal buoyancy. He and his Royal Guard had already kicked off their expedition across the kingdom. Three villages were now off the list. They'd faced feet long and wide, short and narrow. Many of the women had the courtesy and presence of mind to give their feet a bit of a wash; a majority had not.

Even before they'd embarked on their expedition, Fred had known it would be a long, arduous task to fit the glass slipper on the foot of every eligible bachelorette in the kingdom, so it was simply a matter of how he'd entertain himself along the ride. The opportunity of a primary source of amusement, thankfully, had presented itself almost immediately from their launch.

"I curse you to have children that are complete hellions," said Lionel flatly as he glared at Fred from across the coach. "I hope they're demonically possessed because I don't want you to have any easy exit from the problem either. I hope their personalities are simply _that_ bad."

"I don't know why you'd curse me with that," chortled Fred. "Especially considering you'd be the one facing their wrath more often than anyone else."

Lionel's face immediately turned a violent shade of magenta, and a vein on his forehead bulged. He took a deep breath regardless and closed his eyes as he turned his face heavenward. "I don't even know if I _can_ still curse you whilst I've already been cursed to be saddled_ with_ you."

"Lionel, mate, do you know all those exciting stories with hardships to challenge a person's character, makes them the hero they truly are, makes the story last in a person's memories—"

"Yes, Your Grace, and you're the villain in my story."

"_Now_ you've got the gist of it! I've forged you into the man of steel you are."

"I could very easily trip and shatter this shoe."

"And shatter all hope of the future of this monarchy, Lionel, _try it_. Oh, look! We're here!"

The beleaguered valet groaned as Fred threw open the door and hopped out of the coach amidst the cheers of the people in the square. Lionel quickly followed, grumbling and harrumphing under his breath despite maintaining the utmost adherence of protocols—unlike his charge.

Thankfully, Fred forewent the unorthodox introductions he'd thrown out into the public on their first two visits. Lionel had been ready to throw the wooden box with the slipper at Fred's head, so the Prince subsequently left it to the Royal Herald to announce his arrival, intention, and instruction to the assembly around the town center fountain.

This left Fred open to more entertaining pursuits, much to Lionel's chagrin.

As Lionel displayed the professionalism and efficiency he'd been known for (before Fred drove him to regular conniptions), working through the long queue of ladies to be fitted, Fred stood beside him, hands behind his back, nodding intermittently. He projected a sufficiently frustrated mien as more and more women couldn't fit into the magically reshaping glass shoe.

"I don't understand it," muttered Lionel, dabbing his forehead with a kerchief as he stood from his kneeling position. He glared at the shoe, twisting it back and forth in the sunlight. "It's like your unknown princess has the most strangely shaped foot in the world that no other woman can match it."

Fred, completely straight-faced, nodded. "Yes, it's quite a feat."

The lady currently occupying the hot seat tittered, as did the next few women in line that were in earshot. Lionel, however, turned red, the veins in his neck popping.

"You live to torment me, don't you?"

Fred sighed wistfully. "I thought we went over this. I'm here to build your character. It's my _sole_ purpose in life."

Lionel turned his back on him, and Fred barely held back his laughter at what he imagined Lionel's expression to be, judging from the nervous look the next woman in line gave as she sat in the chair and presented her foot.

"Why don't we just put a notice out for a woman matching her description?" grumbled Lionel as he crouched back down. "Why must we match _her foot_?"

"There's greater magic at work here, Lionel," said Fred gravely. "I don't want to _toe_ any lines."

The women in line laughed harder this time. Lionel wheezed and stumbled, losing his balance as the woman's foot slipped out of the shoe.

"I'd rather we take this one _step_ at a time—"

Lionel's wheeze turned into a stifled squeal, and the woman shot out of the chair, eager to be away from the valet who was seconds from a nervous breakdown.

"—that way we know that when we reach the right woman, she'll be a shoe-in."

"Your Highness!" wailed Lionel as the women burst out laughing again.

"Lionel, Lionel," said Fred, patting the man's shoulder. _"Heel."_

* * *

_**I'll be cackling about this chapter for the rest of my life.**_


	9. 7

**7**

* * *

"Perhaps you were right," said Merlinda, fanning her blonde hair back with the slim volume of Italian verbs she was attempting to practice. Thankfully, she'd switched back to English rather than continuing to eviscerate one of the Romance languages. "You really are like a flower that grows in the dirt."

Hermione rolled shifted her weight from one aching knee to the other and focused back on cleaning between the piano keys as the two girls lazed about on the sofas, massacring verb conjugations. Every ten minutes they asked Hermione to further open or further close the curtains to the sunlight, and while it was a reprieve for Hermione's knees, of course it was more of an inconvenience.

"What are you going on about now?" asked Lucinda, sneering at both Hermione and her sister.

Merlinda carelessly gestured at Hermione with her book. "Well, just look at her. She needs a good pruning—just like a plant. Chop off all the hair and start over, maybe."

"Pruning?" cackled Lucinda. "If she's a plant, it's time to pave over that patch of dirt. That'll be one of the first things I do when I become princess."

"You're going to run over her?"

"No, stupid! I'm going to make sure all the roads in the kingdom are re-paved so that the carriage rides will be much smoother," replied Lucinda, nose in the air. For a moment, Hermione was mildly impressed. "And _then_ I'll run her over with my grand royal carriage."

Hermione rolled her eyes again.

It didn't bother her, really. After dancing and talking with Fred, she'd woken up the past few mornings feeling…delightfully irreverent. The pumpkin had disintegrated and the magical ballgown faded back into her work dress, but her mood didn't dissipate—and it still held on even days after the ball as news of Fred's search spread through the kingdom.

This was a _story_, and even though she wasn't entirely sure of the parameters of the magic in this particular catastrophe, there was no reason Hermione should take it any more seriously than she already had. Cinderella's stepsisters were idiots; Cinderella's stepmother was a wretch. Hermione may be suffering their negativity, but their vitriol was directed at _Cinderella_—not at _Hermione Granger._ No matter how relatable their insults, it wasn't about her.

"I don't understand why you'd do that," said Hermione blandly, unable to help herself at this point. If Fred was having as much fun tormenting the entire castle, why couldn't she? "I'm sure I'd only damage the spokes and break the horses' ankles."

"You give your existence too much credit that you'd think you'd affect their lives that much."

Hermione looked up from her meticulous cleaning between the A and B keys to see the grey-haired lady of the manor on the other side of the piano, an old wooden box tucked under one arm, eyebrows more arched than ever. Hermione tried not to sigh too loudly. They were in the third act, after all.

She pushed herself back up to her feet, joints cracking a bit. "Rocks would have the same effect, but they don't matter much in anyone's lives, right?"

"I'm so glad you recognized yourself to be as worthless and troublesome and brainless as a rock," said the stepmother as her daughters tittered. "Come with me."

"Well, _I_ would send her far away so she'd never pose any risk to me or my royal possessions," said Lucinda.

"But wouldn't that be such a waste of help?" argued Merlinda.

Their nasally voices faded as Hermione followed the older woman out toward the main parlor, far from earshot of the insipid girls. Hermione took the opportunity to stretch out her arms and fingers, and the woman shot her a dark look over her shoulder. Hermione merely smiled innocently.

"Worn out after all the work you've done?" asked the woman.

"Not at all," replied Hermione, knowing exactly what was coming.

"Really?" The woman stepped aside to let Hermione enter the cheerful, sunlit parlor first and closed the door behind her. "Because I can imagine how utterly exhausting it is to put on such an elaborate ruse to fool the royal family into thinking you're worth more than you are."

Hermione turned as the woman gingerly pulled out the magical glass slipper from the wooden box, holding it aloft so it sparkled in the sunlight of the parlor.

"I'm impressed," continued the stepmother. "You've built up the false courage to stand up to me and event to lie to the royal family, but unlike those wealth-blinded fools, you can't fool me."

"What will you do?" asked Hermione, genuinely curious at this point. She'd read quite a few different versions of the story, and each time, there was always going to be a flaw to the stepmother's plan if Cinderella wasn't as pure and innocent and kind-hearted.

"You will dress in one of Merlinda's blue frocks—since you so favor the hue."

Hermione bit her lip. Yes, she'd made up her mind to let the story play out as it should in order not to risk waylaying the story into a nebulous ending she wouldn't know how to navigate, but it seemed to still be right on course even in spite of her new characterization.

"When the prince and his retinue arrive, you will present yourself as meek, quiet, and endlessly grateful for my compassion and kindness upon your father's death." The woman set the wooden box down on a nearby table and turned the shoe over in her hands, examining the glass. "You will agree to marry the prince and be welcomed into the royal family."

Hermione folded her hands together behind her back.

"You will tell the prince exactly what I tell you. You will do every little thing I say, lest I reveal to the prince that the girl of his dreams is nothing but a liar and a charlatan—a witch."

Hermione almost laughed aloud. "And yet you willingly presented her to the royal family despite knowing such damaging information?"

The stepmother's eyes flashed in anger as she looked up from the shoe.

"You're attempting to manipulate me and manipulate the prince _through me_," said Hermione, stepping closer, "and expect that you can come out of the situation with your hands clean?"

"Do you enjoy living here, girl?" asked the stepmother, eyes narrowed as her grip on the shoe tightened to the point her knuckles turned white. "Do you enjoy being belittled, treated second-rate like the orphan you are? The one no one wants?"

"I think we've established that I _am_ wanted," countered Hermione, gesturing down to the glass slipper—glimmering even brighter in the sunlight as if its magic was feeding right off Hermione's amusement. "And if you claim me to be a true orphan, then I'd have no reason nor tie to bring you into my good fortune."

She acted on sheer impulse. Perhaps the stepmother was quick-witted, but she was no match for a veteran of the Second Wizarding War, to the Brightest Witch of Her Age. Hermione closed the space between the two of them and snatched the slipper from the woman's hand. It only took a moment to register and relish the shock and outrage on the older woman's face before Hermione threw the gleaming magical shoe down onto the tile floor, shattering it into a million glittering pieces.

Even if she knew Fred would never have believed the lies, there was a part of her that simply couldn't take the idea of the woman feeling like she'd won a damn thing. The satisfaction of smashing the shoe on the floor was almost as good as the piercing scream the lady of the house let loose.

The pleasure was short-lived. A sharp, stinging pain struck Hermione's cheek, forcing her back a few steps and almost crashing into the arm of a nearby settee.

"How dare you?!" thundered the older woman, eyes blazing and cheeks splotchy purple.

Hermione could only shrug as she pulled her hand back from her cheek to see if the blow had drawn blood. "It was _my_ shoe, after all. And I'll never let you have the satisfaction of having something over me. I'll always take the loss if it means you lose too."

The woman stormed over, dug her manicured nails deep into Hermione's upper arm, and dragged her across the parlor, wrenching open the door and scaring off her two eavesdropping daughters. They cowered back from their mother as she hauled Hermione up along the winding staircase toward the attic. She wordlessly threw Hermione to the wooden floor and slammed the door shut, locking it quickly and loudly and nearly breaking the knob in the process.

Hermione could have very easily let the situation wash over her, inciting the same rage and frustration, letting the anger fuel her, but as she considered the situation, she couldn't help but laugh a bit. She lay on the dusty floor for a moment longer. For once, it was nice to be able to laugh off the abuse. She was in the home stretch of the story, and even if she'd gone rogue a bit, she was still on track.

If she couldn't find the mice to pick the lock for her, she was sure to find something in that attic that could spring her loose. As she propped herself up onto her elbows, she scanned the room for anything useful. And then she saw the perfectly-positioned window.

It was fortunate that she and her mother had taken up the occasional hobby of indoor rock-climbing and that years of cavorting through the castle and the greater magical world with Harry and Ron had taught Hermione to never look down.


	10. 8

**8  
**_**and found a prince**_

* * *

Fred had grown tired of the royal carriage. He'd cited his need to become "one" with his kingdom and its climate as the first of many reasons why he should be allowed to ride on a horse instead of a wooden chest on wheels. The second reason was that he needed a breath of fresh air after being exposed to so many souls and soles. The third reason was simply because Lionel was going to have a stroke if he was trapped with Fred any longer, and so the young prince had spared his valet.

The only alternative to which his retinue was amenable was to have him dress as one of his guards so he could ride horseback in anonymity—an alternative he'd seized and relished. Since they were riding out of the quaint villages and bustling town squares and into the countryside, Fred could relax, knowing Hermione was that much closer.

So when their convoy rode up to the last property the census had shown to have unmarried women—the very place he should've gone first—he let Lionel and the herald take the lead. Perhaps he could give Hermione a bit of a fun surprise, dressed as he was. He and two of his guard accompanied the herald and the valet as the distinguished Lady Tremaine led them into the main parlor of the manor.

"And you said how many eligible maidens are in this home, Madam?" asked Lionel, pointedly louder and catching Fred's attention.

"Two," answered the lady almost disdainfully—as if repeating herself caused Lionel to lose credibility in her eyes. "Three if you counted the fact that I am unmarried."

"Only two then?" said Lionel, almost to himself. "Have you any maids?"

"I thought you said eligible," said Lady Tremaine.

"Your standards of eligibility are clearly differing from the_ royal mandate_," said Lionel—a warning if anything.

"Forgive me," said the older woman with not even a shred of remorse. "We do have a maid, though you must have already encountered her at the town square, as she's been running our errands and is still out."

Lionel smiled. "Well, just to be sure, we can wait for her and make sure we've already signed off on her fitting as well."

Lady Tremaine's fake, polite smile took a bit more of a turn down Grimace Lane, but she recovered quickly. "No matter, I'm sure your search will end with either of my daughters."

"But should it not, the prince has searched and waited all this time for his bride. He can wait an hour or two more for one last young maiden," said Lionel. "Wouldn't want the right girl to slip through the cracks."

The woman's fake, polite laugh was even worse than her smile. She cleared her throat after no one else tittered with her and turned to the two fidgeting young women Fred distinctly remembered spotting—and avoiding—at the ball. They'd been dressed in garish pink and green, and he supposed that was the color scheme by which they lived because it was the same colors they were dressed in now.

"May I present my two daughters, Lucinda and Merlinda," said Lady Tremaine proudly as her two daughters gave a trembly and a lopsided curtsy each.

"Bloody hell," muttered Fred under his breath.

He thought he hadn't spoken loud enough, but one of the guards beside him dipped his head with a whispered, cautionary, _"Sir."_

Even Lionel couldn't fully contain his dismay. "Very well—let's begin." Fred was certain the valet's knuckles were white on the box containing the glass slipper.

The first girl—Lucinda—thankfully had relatively odorless feet, since Lionel didn't look nearly as distressed. Correction: he didn't look distressed because of the smell of her feet, but rather at the way she clutched at his shoulder and his head as she attempted to put all her weight into the foot she was shoving into the glass slipper. Honestly, Fred was surprised the shoe itself hadn't broken from the pressure she seemed to be exerting upon it.

"Miss," wheezed out Lionel, as the girl was now putting him in a near-chokehold. "If it hasn't fit by now, I don't think it ever will."

"Don't be deluded!" gritted out Lucinda, now clutching at Lionel's face as she tried coming at the shoe at another angle—as if angle changed fit. "Kingdoms weren't conquered with that attitude!"

Fred was about to faint from how hard he had to hold in his laughter. The two guards who'd accompanied him were now almost shielding him from view.

The second girl—Merlinda—was no better. Though her feet weren't noxious, the sounds emanating from her mouth were as repulsive, and Fred had to pardon himself with the soft excuse of checking on the horses. The girl was carrying on as if she was giving birth right then and there instead of trying put on a shoe. It wasn't as if they were granting the engagement based on effort, so it was beyond him as to why both girls were trying so hard. And the harder they tried, the more their mother seemed inclined to try on the bloody slipper herself to secure their positions in the royal family.

As soon as the front doors closed behind him and he was back out into the open air, he had to bend over and brace his hands on his knees as he laughed, Lionel's face forever imprinted in his mind. But as his laughter petered out, it was replaced by mild concern.

Where the _bloody hell_ was Hermione? She had to be the maid Lady Tremaine had mentioned, but the sun was beginning to set, and she should've been back from the town square by now. If she really was the maid, supper should've been started, and therefore she should've been home. And the town square was barely three miles away, and they hadn't passed by her on the way.

He petted the brown horse he'd been given, and it nuzzled his cloak gently before throwing its head back and neighing toward the house. Fred frowned and looked back. And then up. It was much, _much_ easier, now that he was outside, to spot the figure of a young woman traipsing across the roof of the large manor.

With that abso-_bloody-_lutely unmistakeable bushy hair.

"Gentlemen?" called Fred cheerfully, more impressed than concerned for the bushy-haired woman's safety.

"Your Highness?"

"Is there a girl on that roof or is it the heat?"

"It's…it's a girl, Your Highness."

"Thank you, Captain."

"Would you like us to fetch her, Your Highness?"

"No, Captain, I think I should like to do so myself."

The captain's voice went up an octave. "Your Highness?"

Fred grinned.

"No wonder Lionel is always so red all the time," he heard one of the guards mutter.

"Cheer up, gentlemen!" called Fred, excitedly mounting the horse and urging it toward the small lane that toward the back of the manor. "Today's a beautiful day to find myself a bride."

"On a _roof_, sir?!" called one of the guards.

"Proves she'll be on _top_ of the domestic side of her future queenly duties, eh?" laughed Fred over his shoulder. He barely heard the groans as he trotted along the perimeter of the manor.

Once he found the lowest point of the roof, right above the back door by the chicken pens, he pulled alongside the edge of the sloped roof and waited until he heard soft footsteps and then—

_Whump!_

"Hello there," he said cheerfully, steadying the slightly-spooked horse. "Looks like the lady of the house _did_ miscount, eh, Herms?"

Hermione's expression slid from shock, to relief, to frustration, and then amusement. Fred helped her sit up a bit better on his lap.

"Looks like you're missing both shoes, but I've only got the one to solve your problems."

"It's good to see you too, Fred," she sighed.

"I'd say the same, but I'm mostly relieved at your scent."

"Pardon?"

"I won't be able to get the smell of feet out of my nose for a while, Granger," he hissed, grimacing at his turned the horse back toward the front of the manor.

"That's disgusting, but I'm the one who climbed down a _tower_, Weasley. We'll compare scars later."

Fred grinned again and as soon as the guards came to view, he waved them closer to help Hermione off the horse.

"And are you the missing maiden?" asked one of the guards who'd accompanied Fred into the manor.

"More like the indentured servant at this point," sighed Hermione, self-consciously smoothing down her hair.

"And why were you on the roof, Miss?"

"Because apparently indentured servants are locked in towers," answered Fred for her as he hopped down onto the grass beside her.

"Well, if I may be so bold as to say, Miss," said the guard, nodding at the roof, "you've shown a lot more courage and athleticism than a lot of my comrades." He tipped his hat to her with a grin.

"Thank you," said Hermione, laughing.

"I daresay, with what you've displayed up there, you could probably ride a _dragon_," added Fred, offering her his elbow.

She shook her head at him and slipped her hand onto his arm as he led her back up the front steps and to the entrance of the house, which suddenly sprang open with a harried-looking Lionel behind them.

"We've got a late arrival," said Fred, with a huge smile. He spotted Lady Tremaine and her two daughters—both missing one shoe, and his smile grew even wider at their shell-shocked expressions directed at Hermione.

He used his free hand to pull off the royal guard's helm and the cape, handing them off to a nearby guard, and the three women dropped to their knees in deep curtsies.

"Your Royal Highness!" they chorused.

"My good lady," he announced haughtily. "We've found your wayward maid cleaning the very tiles of the roof—you should be so proud of her dedication. Will someone fetch her water? Or perhaps tea?"

Hermione squeezed his arm warningly.

"You just climbed down a tower," said Fred smugly as the two daughters darted off clumsily. "Enjoy this."

"Fred—"

"Have you a large assortment of _teas_, Lady Tremaine?" asked Fred, sounding as highfaluting as he could, leading Hermione to one of the settees and surreptitiously kicking away the other two girls' shoes so she didn't trip over them. "Darjeeling, oolong, jasmine? Green, black, white?"

The woman's ears turned every shade between peach and puce.

"It was quite amusing, actually," said Fred, gesturing for Hermione to sit. "It's like fate dropped her right onto my lap—not with one eligible foot, but _two_!"

A loud clatter and crash came from the other side of the house. Merlinda and Lucinda must not have any idea how to pick up a kettle, let alone boil one full of water.

"Your Highness, I can't let you debase yourself in good conscience by continuing to be in the presence of this traitorous wretch," said Lady Tremaine, rushing forward and attempting to assert herself between Fred and Hermione where she sat.

When Fred glanced back down at her, she saw something freeze on his expression. Hermione could almost see the princely good humor melt from Fred's face and the horns growing on his head.

"Madam, I understand wanting to step in during strenuous circumstances," he said, eyeing her until she backed away in intimidated deference, "but considering the deceit upon which you greeted us, which has led to this poor young lady taking unorthodox but appropriate steps to secure her freedom, I suggest you perhaps take a mile in her shoes. Literally or figuratively, I don't mind either as long as it brings you far from me. Further. Further. Good. Thank you."

Hermione closed her eyes to keep from anyone seeing her roll her eyes. She glanced at Lionel who stood at her other side almost protectively.

"How many puns has it been?" she asked him softly.

"I lost count after five-hundred and twenty-eight," said Lionel wearily.

"Now where's that tea? I've always found a good cup heels the sole."

Lionel exhaled. "I need to retire."

Hermione covered her mouth to keep from laughing, and the stepmother was well on her way to a lovely purple shade that reminded Hermione so _dearly_ of Umbridge. Fred really knew how to bring out such vivid colors on horrible people's faces.

"I should've known there had to be another person in the house," he mused, staring at the grey-haired woman. "Everything is entirely too clean. You all should really learn to stand on your own two feet."

Hermione sighed. "Erm, Your Grace—"

"But I suppose it's hard to stand on your feet when you so enjoy putting one in your mouth," said Fred, his cheery tone turning dark. He motioned to Hermione, and it was then that she realized that Fred had only ever seen one side of her since she'd fallen onto his lap. He must've seen the aching bruise on the other side of her face. No wonder Lionel had quickly flanked her other side when he'd opened the front doors. "Nothing really sets my blood boiling more than being told lies."

All the color that had suffused the older woman's face immediately drained.

"Is she your maid, Lady Tremaine, or your prisoner?" asked Fred. "Unless your roof tiles are shaped like handprints, I can't quite fathom why this young lady would have such a mark on her face."

"Fred," said Hermione softly.

The valet looked like he was about to faint when Hermione addressed the prince so informally, but Fred only shook his head.

"No matter, I suppose. I was hoping to enjoy this a bit more, but I think I've had my fill of this place," muttered Fred, turning back to Hermione. "I'm sure _you_ have as well."

He snapped his fingers, and Lionel hastened to his side with the ornate wooden box, open to the sparkling glass slipper. Fred didn't waste another second before taking the magical shoe and dropping to one knee before Hermione. A moment after, a tray of china joined the floor when Merlinda and Lucinda entered the room again.

Fred reached for her foot, taking the back of her ankle with three fingers and lifting gently. She barely had to tip her toes before he was slipping on the surprisingly warm glass shoe over her toes and under her heel. It fit perfectly, of course. Hermione felt the thrum of magic as she caught Fred's good-natured wink and and smirk.

The warmth of the shoe grew until it was nearly humming with magical heat, and even Fred's eyes fell back onto it. The magic hit a crescendo and the sparkling glass emitted a faint glow that quickly strengthened until it bathed the entire parlor in a soft, silver light.

"Oh," said Fred, sounding impressed. "Looks like something's afoot."

"For Circe's sake—"


End file.
